any "seriously knowledgeable" non toxic shotshell reloads out there?

Jon Yenulonis

Jon Yenulonis

Well-known member
A buddy of mine has been using a now obsolete, non toxic shot shells called Heavy Weight. Apparently, it is no longer to be found. He loves the stuff, has confidence in it, and obviously shoots it well. He found someone out of state who has a very large personal stash of some sort of extremely heavy and dense Tungsten shot. He is looking into reloading his own tungsten shot for waterfowl. Alas, he's been quizzing me on my experience with reloading in general. While I do know a bit, I can't answer his questions. One has to be extremely careful with head pressures and all that. He has a line on the company in South Dakota who will test his loads for him, and he is all set to do that. He just would like to talk to someone in the know before he heads into it blindly.

Jon
 
I reload almost all my waterfowl loads, bismuth or nice shot

I am a firm believer in following proven recipes, testing is still a good idea

There are just too many variables and not all "tungsten" is created equal
 
Jon,

By all means he should be using proven recipes - and they are available for all the non-toxic shot I have seen. While I have been reloading for decades, my experience with non-tox is limited to a bit of bismuth in 28 ga., some hevi-shot in 20 and 28 ga. I do have a bag of E shot in my reloading room but haven't taken the leap into it yet. I really haven't seen the need for much of anything better than Kent Fasteel - and I shoot a 20 ga.

If your buddy has found a stash of pure tungsten shot, be very careful. That shot has a density very near 18 grams/CC which means that you don't get many pellets in a load before you reach the maximum pressure for that gauge. Sure the downrange ballistics are great but at what cost in terms of pellet count.

There are several companies that will pressure test loads and I think he is smart to have his loads tested. Reloading and playing around to get the best performance is a lot of fun but we have to be smart about it.
 
Jon,

By all means he should be using proven recipes - and they are available for all the non-toxic shot I have seen. While I have been reloading for decades, my experience with non-tox is limited to a bit of bismuth in 28 ga., some hevi-shot in 20 and 28 ga. I do have a bag of E shot in my reloading room but haven't taken the leap into it yet. I really haven't seen the need for much of anything better than Kent Fasteel - and I shoot a 20 ga.

If your buddy has found a stash of pure tungsten shot, be very careful. That shot has a density very near 18 grams/CC which means that you don't get many pellets in a load before you reach the maximum pressure for that gauge. Sure the downrange ballistics are great but at what cost in terms of pellet count.

There are several companies that will pressure test loads and I think he is smart to have his loads tested. Reloading and playing around to get the best performance is a lot of fun but we have to be smart about it.
Click to expand...

If it is pure, it can be very small and the small size will made up for it. So, if the stash is of larger shot, in this case something like 6 or larger, he should think real hard. The reading I did for turkies seemed like 9s were good to extreme range, like 50 plus yards. Doing some guessing I'd want to try 8s for ducks. I've shot 7s in the orig heavy and that would kill further than I could pass shooting and that was less dense.
 
Heavy Weight was sold by Buck Run Sports Supply in Pine Island, MN. The density was up to 13.5.

I loaded some goose loads for long distance shooting. Unfortunately, the geese keep coming right into the decoys and it is hard to judge a load at 20 yards.
 
Theres a guy that goes by the nickname HawgLips over on ShotgunWorld.com and I think he's on RefugeForums.Com too in the shooting-Reloading forum. He has a lot of knowledge on the Tungsten Super Shot at 18g/cc. He sells it and has proven load data, from what I understand.

If I recall correctly, he recommends #9 for ducks, and nothing larger than #8 for geese.

I'd contact him. I have his information at home.
 
While I am not "Seriously Knowledgeable" about the product, it has got me interested in finding out more. I have done a little research and I am considering getting a little to play with... There is a webpage here super18tungstenshot.com I just popped on here to see if anyone had been talking about this stuff and when I searched the forum your post popped up. Good luck
 
Hal or hawg lips is who you want
His most active forum is gobbler nation

Tss is some serious medicine, 9 or 9.5 is sufficient for ducks
Contrary to above you will get superior pellet counts cause u are using such small shot size
I can't imagine shooting it for ducks just from a cost perspective
 
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